Attraction in Hollywood
Each year, millions of tourists visit Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles. The street offers plenty of attractions: museums, restaurants, theaters, big, glitzy stores, and the occasional celebrity sighting. To catch the attention of passers-by on this busy thoroughfare, the Guinness World Records Museum has unveiled a new interactive, outdoor display that uses TYZX 3D vision cameras, a video game engine rendering 3D characters, and sophisticated software to create an eye-catching, interactive show for pedestrians.
The new installation was designed and built by Electroland, a design team that creates large-scale, site-specific, public art experiences. Electroland's work has been featured at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum.
The Electroland installation at the Guinness Museum uses three TYZX DeepSea G3 Embedded Vision Systems (EVS) and TYZX PersonTrack software to detect and monitor the position and movement of pedestrians in a 10m by 7m "detection area" along the front of the museum. Each EVS is an intelligent, self-contained 3D sensor solution that uses stereo vision to track the size and location of people and objects in real time, even in challenging lighting conditions. The PersonTrack software enables the Electroland installation to track pedestrians and react to their movements.
Along the front wall of the museum, Electroland installed a 3 x 4 matrix of Planar Clarity Matrix LCD screens, roughly 3m wide by 2.5m tall. In response to tracking data from the PersonTrack application, the LCD screen displays sophisticated 3D avatars - the type of human figure that appears in advanced video games - performing some action or stunt related to a Guinness World Record.
Damon Seeley, a partner at Electroland, explains that the goal is to catch the attention of passers-by and entice them into visiting the museum. The interactivity of the system, along with the drama of avatars performing tricks such as juggling chainsaws or throwing basketballs, is sure to persuade many pedestrians to slow down and give the museum a closer look.
One of the major engineering challenges of the project was to find a real-time camera system that would reliably report range data on crowded sidewalks, regardless of lighting conditions and weather.
"The TYZX G3 EVS is far better than other camera systems we've used," said Seeley. "It's fast, accurate, and reliable. Because the system is small, fan-less, and low-power, we're able to install it in tight spaces and have it track people and objects in a large area. TYZX makes it possible for us to bring a new type of theater and technology to the international audience strolling down this famous street."
